From Jouy-en-Josas to Ljubljana and Oslo

Ljubljana -2004

The 30th EIBA conference in Ljubljana was a memorable event, not only because it was the first conference in one of the news EU-countries, but also because of its scientific quality and pleasant social events. EIBA owes a lot to the three MMMs i.e. Marjan Svetlicic, Matija Rojec and Maja Bucar. The short evaluation of this successful conference, written by the immediate past president Marjan Svetlicic and included in this newsletter, does not do full justice to the many successful events that were organized in Ljubljana, but the local team is probably too modest about its contributions to the academic and social dimension of the conference.

On the one hand high level quality papers were presented and on the other hand the social happenings certainly forged an even more intense link of friendship among EIBA members and participants. One of the principal highlights of the conference undoubtedly was the standing ovation addressed to John Dunning when he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the EIBA community. An academic laudatio by John Cantwell and a more light-hearted one by Rajneesh Narula put both scientific merits and the human aspects of John Dunning’s personality in perspective. May be it will be possible to print their remarks in a future edition of the EIBA-zine.

Oslo-2005
As is clear form the letter of the EIBA President, Gabriel Benito, Oslo-2005 will continue in the same vein as Ljubljana and Copenhagen and deliver another successful EIBA conference in Oslo. At the interim board meeting in Oslo at the end of April some board members got worried about the state of readiness of the conference venue. Indeed the new building of the BI Norwegian School of Management was still under construction at the time of that meeting. Yet, the board members became quickly convinced that the Oslo team had everything under control. In his letter Gabriel is rightfully proud that 250 paper submissions were received and that a number of new initiatives are being launched.

An important new development is also the EIBA Fellows’ Young Scholars Award that will be granted for the first time during the Oslo meeting.

The EIBA board meeting in Oslo also decided about the venue of the 2007 conference in Catania, Sicily, Italy to be organised by Grazia Santangelo.

Jouy-en-Josas-1974

Ljubljana was the 30th EIBA Conference. During the special session organized to commemorate the founding of our Academy, I read a special message from the first president of EIBA, Jim Leontiades:

Dear EIBA Colleagues,

I am truly sorry that my teaching commitments in Cyprus do not permit me to join with you today in celebrating the 30th anniversary of our association. 30 years sounds like long time but believe me it is not very long for those that have already lived through them. Even so, enough time has gone by now that we can say that EIBA has not only survived but has firmly established itself as a part of the European research environment and more importantly it has contributed substantially to European research on our favourite subject.

Many persons have contributed to this success – I refer not only to those attending EIBA conferences such as this one but also that have taken on the administrative burden required to continue such events as well as the other activities now springing up. The evidence of EIBA development over the past 30 years shows that the initiative to establish EIBA was in fact a very useful one. EIBA has grown and with your support it will continue to grow, develop and contribute further to European research.

I wish you all a very fruitful and productive meeting. I look forward to participating in future EIBA meetings.

Jim Leontiades, Cyprus International Institute of Management, Nicosia, Cyprus

It is probably a coincidence that at the 30th anniversary of EIBA questions were raised about the relationship AIB-EIBA. Since many years EIBA has also functioned as the West European Chapter for the Academy of International Business. I was a shock to some of the board members that the project for a new constitution of AIB was likely to make it impossible for EIBA to continue to play this role. Although a compromise was agreed upon at the end of the EIBA conference in Ljubljana between the President of AIB, Alan Rugman and Peter Buckley, immediate past president of AIB on the one hand and myself on behalf of EIBA the contradictions between the EIBA constitution and the proposed AIB statutes remain. As a result of the so-called Buckley or Ljubljana compromise a business meeting of the AIB members of EIBA will be held in Oslo. Hopefully the differences can be resolved during this meeting.

Doctoral Studies

Next to the comments by the winner of the EIBA-EIASM Doctoral Tutorial some interesting reflections are given by Fragkiskos Filippaios about doctoral studies.

See you all in Oslo.

Danny Van Den Bulcke